Such was the situation of what the French staff aptly called the “open town” of Hondebecq in the last weeks of the war. By daylight, the Spanish Farm was at work, Madeleine and her two veterans, with the two mules, getting in all the undamaged crops--for nearly a quarter of the total acreage of the farm was lost in trench and wire, dugout and shell-hole. Hardly a day passed but had its hair-breadth escape from buried “duds” or unexploded shell, or caved-in gun-pit. Madeleine worked because it was natural to her--because she had nothing else to do, possibly with some unconscious idea of dedication to her father’s memory. At dusk, Jacobs and the Baron would arrive, on bicycles, the one having toured his area, which stretched from the line of evacuation that ran from the Belgian border, through Hazebrouck down to Aire--away to the maze of desultory trenches from which the English troops were slowly pushing the last German machine gunners. The Baron usually acted as his guide, and in Jacobs’ company avoided otherwise certain arrest. Madeleine would just be finishing her evening meal with the veterans. Jacobs would produce a field message book in which he had noted the map reference of any unburied offence, human or otherwise, and at his order the old men would jog off with one of the tireless mules in a salvaged limber, two shovels, a tin of disinfectant, and a lantern clattering in the springless vehicle. Madeleine cleared the table and served dinner to Jacobs and the Baron, who would sit over it, drinking canteen whisky and discussing in English-French and French-English the submarine menace and surface drainage, by means of any daily papers they had gleaned during the day’s wandering, and with the help of Madeleine’s translation. By the time both were ready to return to their never-made “beds” in the château, the veterans would come clattering back, the mules going at an unearthly amble in the darkness, and all was ready for the morrow. * * * * *